1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus, and, more particularly, to an imaging apparatus and method for converting a source gamut of an image to a destination gamut.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of all-in-one (AIO) imaging apparatuses with a scanner and printer is proliferating in both home and office environments. One of the primary uses of an AIO imaging apparatus is copying images or documents created from different sources. The sources may be images previously printed with a printer or the same imaging apparatus, magazines, hand paintings, etc. The variation in color gamut output by different sources may vary considerably. For example, the color gamut of images printed by inkjet printers may be much smaller than that of images from magazines produced by industrial magazine printers. In other words, one source of images or documents may be much different from another source in terms of color gamut, and this difference depends on the source producers (e.g., home-used inkjet printer, industrial printer, painter, etc.). Ideally, one may expect that the AIO system possesses a big color gamut that can accommodate all color gamuts of various copying sources. However, the AIO system's color gamut is limited and usually small since it depends on not only the scanner color gamut but also the associated printer color gamut, both of which may be small. With this limited condition, a challenging problem encountered by color reproduction engineers is how to reproduce the color gamuts from various sources of documents so as to allow a user to easily and optimally replicate an image obtained from one of the various sources.
What is needed in the art is an imaging apparatus and method for converting a source gamut of an image to a destination gamut.